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To protect crime victims, support jail reform | Opinion

When asked what county jails are for, the average Michigander will likely say “public safety.” So might the average lawmaker. Jails are there to protect the community, right?

Before the Michigan Jails Task Force released its report earlier this year, it wasn’t well known that tens of thousands of people were jailed in our state for driving on a suspended license or for unpaid tickets, fees, and child support. It wasn’t well known that rural counties in our state were outpacing Wayne and Kent Counties in jail population and seeing extremely high rates of serious mental illness among those jailed.

Somewhere along the way, as Michigan’s jails tripled in size, their purpose got muddled. They became a tool for debt collection. A tool for responding to homelessness, mental illness, and addiction.

To address this problem, we have to sharpen our focus on public safety. At each point in our justice system — from issuing warrants, to making arrests, to deciding who should be released pending trial, and how those found guilty should be punished — our laws should focus police, judges, and other decision-makers on immediate safety threats rather than money, addiction, and nuisances.

Recently, during Crime Victims Rights Week, we celebrated policies designed to protect and serve people who have been hurt by violence and other forms of victimization. Remedies to immediate safety concerns are something that victims of crime are particularly interested in upholding and strengthening in any jail reform efforts.

The Jails Task Force investigation made clear that we can do right by victims and also reduce incarceration. We can serve, support, and strengthen protections for victims, prioritize and center the voices of victims in our justice systems, and also do less harm to those accused of low-level crimes. It is not an either/or – it has to be both!

Here’s how: The recommendations propose stronger provisions in the law and state budget to better equip law enforcement to respond to domestic violence calls and have more information at their fingertips when handling protection order violations. They propose significant investment in counseling, shelters, and other supportive services for crime victims and survivors. They make explicit that decisions about arrest, pretrial release, and punishment for offenses must turn on safety rather than other considerations, and they consistently distinguish between assaultive and non-assaultive crime. Finally, the task force recommendations insist on continued training for law enforcement to recognize signs of interpersonal violence and risk – even in the absence of bruises.

Earlier this year, Attorney General Nessel abstained from a vote to support the Task Force recommendations, suggesting without offering specifics that the proposed policies did not adequately balance reforms with the interests of crime victims. She’s wrong. I know, because my job on the Jails Task Force was to invite and incorporate victim and survivor input into the policy recommendations, and ensure that the policy fixes proposed would reduce victimization. More than that, I have been a victim of domestic violence. I understand the insidious nature of it and how it is often missed in the criminal legal and child welfare systems.

What I learned from hours of public testimony, from roundtables with more than 50 survivors and victim advocates, and from a thoughtful policy development process, was that victims do not all speak with one voice. That our law enforcement need more training, resources, and information. And that while jail can provide peace of mind for those in immediate danger, not every problem requires an arrest.

In my 30 years working at the cross-section of our legal and behavioral health systems, I’ve also seen how our justice system leaves victims on both sides of a criminal case.

The input from victim advocates and survivors of crime shaped every single recommendation in the report. It gave us a roadmap for redefining how our jails should be used – and how we need to strengthen the training efforts of law enforcement and court systems. It’s precisely because of their input and influence in this process that our legislative leaders lifted up the Task Force’s policy recommendations as a top priority for 2020.

This guidance, which was developed in pre-COVID-19 times, has also offered sheriffs and judges a useful roadmap for safely reducing jail populations in the short-term to guard against the risk of more coronavirus outbreaks inside our jails. I urge our state House and Senate to continue refining these policy proposals in partnership with victim advocates and adopt them into law. Let’s commit to a system that does less harm!

Dr. Sheryl Kubiak is Dean of the School of Social Work at Wayne State University and the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice, and she served as a victim advocate on both the Criminal Justice Policy Commission and the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration.